Traveling the Consulting Road: Career Wisdom for New Consultants, Candidates and Their Mentors

By Alan Cay Culler

A complete newbie to pro guide to a successful consulting career

 

Traveling the Consulting Road is a book about consulting for new consultants, students investigating the field, and for more senior consultants who find themselves sorting out late career choices and coaching newbies. These are the funny stories, lessons-learned-the-hard-way, and tools and methodologies used, from Alan Culler's lifetime consulting career. The book traces the trajectory of a consulting career with information about the evolution of the industry, and specific advice about getting hired, succeeding inside a firm or as an independent if you choose.

 

Clients hiire consultants to increase revenue, improve profit or for "people stuff." People stuf has huge implications on both revenue and profit, but often clients don't see the economic implications of leadership development, process alignement, organization design, and climate and culture.

 

Alan started out in consulting doing new product introduction research, but gravitated to "people stuff" over time. He comments from his work with firms large and small and from being an independent consultant, the founder of a firm and also a network of independents.

 

This is a book written for new consultants to use throughout their career. Consequently those with more experience may find themselves skipping to the later chapters to read about the rainmaker and thought leader roles or whether and when to start a firm or go independent.

Alan's stated purpose to help others "avoid the mistakes I made. "I succeeded in spite of myself, but it wasn't always the best path." Alan's ability to poke fun at himself makes for easy reading and the insightful descriptions will help candidates evaluate the field and new consultants be successful. Alan often says, "Don't do what I did! This is what I wish I understood at the time."

 

His advice "Be authentic! You are the product  ̶  help clients change results in their business."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Unusual Wisdom Press LLC
• Release date: Feb 27, 2024
• ISBN: 9798987851807

Book preview

Preface

Consultants Are Everywhere

In 1991 I wrote about how I was continually amazed at the ubiquity of consulting and how I found it in the most unexpected situations.

My hair cutter then was an unusual man, a dark-skinned Mediterranean, a guy’s guy, a salesman, a dealmaker, quick with a joke or a story. I went to him not just for his stories, but because he cut my hair really well. I found it difficult to find a good cutter, and Mico was a good cutter.

But I did like his stories. I collect stories the way other guys collect beer mats or coins.

One day, Mico started by saying, "You may appreciate this. I mean, because you’re a consultant."

I told him once what I did; he remembered a lot, at odd times perhaps, but I was still flattered.

I was a consultant once, to a college, a community college. . . me, a guy who just made it outta high school. This is one of the only colleges in the country with a course in cosmetology. The state wanted to close them down. They weren’t making any money. They’d had these statistical engineers come in. The state sent them . . . they couldn’t find out what was wrong.

Mico went on to tell me how he went into the school, observed for two days, then talked to the faculty together and individually and talked to the students together and individually. He explained to each of them:

This school is yours. When I leave, you’re gonna work or go to school here, if you save it.

His real-world experience (he had successfully run his own shop for years) and his down-to-earth manner apparently won over faculty and students alike. He made some suggestions; they made some suggestions. They took action.

A year later they paid for my ticket to come back and see what they did. They were profitable. The state was happy. They were happy. And it made me feel good, you know. They gave me a lotta credit when I was there. You know, they said I had turned it around. That made me feel good. But they did it. Probably could do it again without me now if they had to. I see why you like what you do . . . You know, I get a lotta guys who don’t like what they do and I think . . .

Mico was off on another tale, but I was back at that community college with him. He had described a near-perfect process intervention that had left the client empowered to continue on after he left.

His principles are the consulting process: Entry- Diagnosis-Solve - Implement - Disengage

Observe with the eyes of the outsider who knows something about what they do.

Gather input from many sources.

Make suggestions.

Give them their ball back, and then

Leave, get out. Fish, relatives, and consultants stink if they’re around too long.

Always be prepared to find wisdom in unusual places.

I. Introduction

What is a Consultant?

C onsulting wisdom? Isn’t that an oxymoron? I might concede that consultants are smart. Just ask ’em; they’ll tell you how smart they are! But wise? Not so sure about that.

This is a conversation I overheard at a business conference once. It was early enough in my career that I didn’t think I could engage without being defensive, so I walked on.

Many people’s experiences with consultants are quite negative.

They interviewed me and then presented my ideas as their own. Can you believe what we are paying these guys? Don’t ask about raises or bonuses this year or next! They said the industry standard span of control was twelve and I needed to fire two of my managers and five people – they had a list. They’ve been here less than a week.

Probably all those criticisms are justified. Consultants are sometimes hired as hatchet-men. They’re sometimes paid unreasonable amounts compared to internal people. And they are sometimes arrogant and don’t give credit where credit is due.

Consultants can also help grow some companies and turn others around. They can set up systems quickly because they have done it before while internal people would need to learn on the job. External consultants can bring needed expertise that would be too expensive to keep on staff.

Consultants help clients and their companies change. Some people react negatively to the word. Change? You won’t change me! We just want a new strategy. The truth is no one ever spent large sums of money to maintain the status quo. Even a new strategy is a plan to do different things. A client hires a consultant to help make that change a reality. The consultant might provide new information about customers and competitors. A consultant might teach you new ways of doing things.

The best consultants give their clients new perspective, skills, and the strength to do what they couldn’t do before without taking credit. They are quietly transformative.

Consultants can be helpful or they can be jerks, like most people. Sometimes consultants can be both helpful and jerks at the same time.

I wrote this book to encourage consultants to be helpful, like the best medical professional you can imagine.

I came to understand consulting as a helping profession much too slowly. I also wrote this book as the philosophical career guide that I wish I’d had as a Newbie, a new consultant or even a student investigating the field. I wish I had previewed this book before I became a mid-career consultant trying to balance the needs of clients and my consulting team while deciding if I was on a partner track in an up or out environment.

I also wish I’d had this as a senior consultant, struggling to either sell enough to make partner or become independent or start a firm. In my thirty-seven year consulting career, I worked for five consulting firms of various sizes. I founded a small firm, worked as a solo practitioner, and founded a confederation of independent consultants. Most of my early career decisions were made without an understanding of the industry or any idea about why companies hire consultants.

Why do companies hire consultants?

First, companies don’t hire consultants; company executives hire consultants. That may seem like splitting hairs. After all, company executives work for their companies and are charged with acting in the interest of the companies, right? Right (mostly).

But if one starts with the concept that a client is an individual, even if that client is part of a collection of individuals or a client system, it makes serving clients more personal and the process of acquiring clients, or selling, less of a mystery.

Second, a client hires a consultant to solve a problem or to help make a change. Here some clients might push back because they object to either the word problem or change. They may substitute opportunity for problem or words like improvement or innovation or descriptors like leap-frogging or updating for the dreaded C-word (change). But no board of directors ever approved a hundred thousand or million dollar expenditure to maintain the status quo.

So some of the problems, issues, and/or concerns that a company executive might hire a consultant to help with include:

Grow revenue, or

Grow profit, or

People stuff.

Wait, that’s it? What about a new strategy? (We need more customers than our competition, or innovation, or new products and services to grow revenue.) What about digital transformation? (We need streamlined operations to reduce cost and grow profit; we need better customer information to speed our product to market to grow revenue.)

Actually it’s all people stuff. Culture, climate, employee benefits, and organization design shouldn’t be lumped into a separate category. Simply put, attracting and keeping people = profit growth and/or revenue growth. But often clients who have a people problem aren’t thinking economically. They can’t hire enough people or the right ones, or people are leaving, or unhappy and want a union, or clients don’t know who to put in what role or how to organize. So I’ve listed people stuff separately.

Consultants can bring new ideas or they can legitimize an internal idea. They can bring new processes, methodologies or systems, or help improve existing ones to solve a revenue, profit or people problem. Clients hire consultants as problem solvers. They expect that these consultants have solved their problem before. They may expect problem-solving rigor steeped in data and/or the scientific method. But mostly the client wants a specific result, i.e., more revenue, more profit, or both.

Ideally, this is a true statement. In the real world, however, sometimes a company executive hires a consultant because his or her boss insists on it, or to do an unpleasant task like reducing headcount, or to justify his idea over a rival’s. Sometimes a client hires a consultant to try the latest management fad just to shake things up. In my career I tried to avoid these kinds of projects, because I believe they are a waste of money. I wasn’t always successful.

What attracts a person to the consulting road?

For some, it’s the money. The consulting profession isn’t likely to make you tech entrepreneur or investment banker rich, but it can produce a solidly upper-middle-class lifestyle. For others, it’s glamour and prestige. These folks quickly learn that constant travel is grueling, not glamorous, and talking to CEOs is just a work meeting where pleasing your boss (a consulting partner) and your boss’s boss (a client CEO) is a challenge.

I was attracted to consulting for these naive reasons. What kept me in the field was the work of structured problem solving, and the variety of industries and problems I worked in and on. There was a continual steep learning curve and I find learning fun.

There are three typical entry points to the field: post undergraduate, postgraduate, and mid-career directly from a business. Post undergraduate and postgraduate hires are often called Newbies. Some firms do a better job of training these entrants than others, but most consulting training is focused on this group.

The major consulting firms - McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group Accenture, Bain, and PwC (formerly known as PricewaterhouseCoopers) - recruit top students from top universities as analysts. Often these students join as summer interns between their junior and senior years. These are plum internships because these firms are known as good places to be from in the same way that Ivy League universities are. Some undergraduate consulting entrants go to work initially as analysts in investment banking and then move on to consulting two years later. The typical consulting analyst works in the field for two to four years, perhaps to pay down student loans, and then moves on to a job elsewhere. Some analysts choose to get a graduate degree. A few analysts are sponsored by the consulting firm to attend business school.

Graduate school recruitment, especially MBA recruitment, used to be the biggest source of new consultants. PhD programs and master’s programs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have been added.

Those who join consulting from industry are often hired as subject matter experts after spending ten-plus years in one discipline in one industry where the firm has substantial client work. Depending on how senior the new hire is, he or she may avoid the typical grind of project work and be brought in to offer expertise and gravitas in client pitches and presentations. Otherwise, they may be used to shorten the learning curve of consultants working in a new industry. Some firms provide these entrants with unique induction training while others treat them the same way they treat Newbies. I too frequently saw poor onboarding for experienced industry hires.

The levels and jobs of a consulting career

There is a life cycle of roles in consulting. I’ve called these Newbies, Journeymen, and Pros. This sounds like the apprentice, journeyman, master-craftsman of the building trades, but that is a formal process with testing and certifications. The consulting firms I worked in had nothing like that. There are three distinctly different jobs:

Newbies: a person investigating the field, a new entrant, a starting analyst, someone who does a lot of the work. Newbies work hard, learn a lot and burn out or get promoted within a few years. There is some Newbie hazing that goes along with the role, and many consultants seemingly look down on Newbies after they have learned the ropes and graduated to a slightly more advanced role. But get a few experienced consultants together talking in a bar and they will speak wistfully about this period in their careers, when everything was new and they were drinking from the fire hose every day. In the best firms there’s a Newbie comradery that lasts a long time. You never forget those you shared a foxhole with.

The word Newbie may evoke a derogatory connotation; I hated being called a Newbie myself. Some consultants will maintain that Newbie applies only to the first two weeks of a new person’s career after which they become a valued associate. OK, sure. These junior consultants still do a lot of the work.)

Journeymen: these are mid-career consultants who manage the team and keep the client happy day-to-day. Journeymen still do work, sometimes more than is realistic, and they keep the wheels on the bus, solving team and client problems as they go. They may be called senior consultants, senior associates, team leads, engagement managers, project managers, account managers, or principals. I kept the word Journeymen because mid-career consultants are the backbone of any firm. They manage projects, client system interactions, consulting teams, budgets, deliverables, and in some cases results. They’re expected to be able to do the work of those below them and direct the judicious application of seniors above them. It’s a tough job.

Pros: this role includes the been-around-the-block senior people, discipline or methodology experts and partners of every stripe. Pros don’t have to be old in years. Some are even in their late twenties or early thirties, but they bring a certain gravitas to every project. Clients listen to them. They also have a completely different job. Their mandate is to bring in business, new clients, new projects from existing clients, extensions on existing projects, in other words . . . sell.

Some consultants and some firms dislike the word sell because they think selling is beneath the profession. They may call it client development, business development, or having client conversations, but personal selling is what generates revenue in consulting. It is the major criterion for promotion from manager to partner. Pros sell directly by bringing in new clients, or indirectly by developing new service offerings and methodologies, writing books, speaking and attracting clients. Usually, not always, partners get a share of the revenue they bring in, or a share of the profits based upon the clients they bring, so direct sales pays better than service offering development.

My background

I joined consulting after getting my MBA at the London Business School. I got a summer internship at the London office of Harbridge House (HHI), a Boston-based firm that was ultimately acquired by an antecedent firm of PwC. I did well enough that I ended up working fulltime at HHI during my second year of business school.

At HHI, I worked on three new product introduction studies in the automotive industry. I also learned how to get up to speed in an industry quickly and learn enough to have intelligent conversations with people who had worked in the industry for their entire life. I also learned that consulting is about change and that leadership engagement and commitment are critical.

Soon after LBS and HHI, I went to the Forum Corporation and learned training and organization development approaches. This is where I met George Litwin, Warner Burke, and a host of other Organizational Development thought leaders. I worked behind George Litwin for ten years, and learned a lot about organizations and how to develop and deliver training.

The turnaround of British Airways (1984-87) was the most significant project of this period. I include a full description of this project in the Appendix because it shaped my view of change and throughout my career kept me looking for the Holy Grail-like combination of successful change elements.

I now realize that BA had the benefit of:

A burning platform (Margaret Thatcher’s privatize-or-close ultimatum).

Clear business goals, which, in three years, took BA from having the worst customer service and profit record in the industry to the best in both categories.

A new executive team (John King and Colin Marshall).

Lots of money (the deep pockets of the British government).

Soon after BA, I became an independent consultant for the first time. Working on my own for eight years taught me that I can survive and improvise, but I eventually wanted large projects and colleagues so I joined Gemini Consulting. I expanded my skill set with Gemini’s reengineering methodology and taught Six Sigma at GE Capital. I thrived in the Gemini team environment and ultimately became head of the North American organizational discipline.

From Gemini I went to Katzenbach Partners, a small McKinsey spinoff, to be part of growing something new. I stayed there for four years because of the excitement of the startup environment, despite the fact that the promised blend of organization development process with McKinsey analysis never quite happened.

After leaving Katzenbach, I worked as an independent consultant for another fourteen years in a variety of business structures. The most lasting was the Results-Alliance, a confederation of independent consultants and small firms helping clients develop internal capability to implement sustainable change.

My biases

As will become apparent, along the way I developed certain biases about the field:

People focus. I strongly believe that business is about people. Whether they are called customers, staff, suppliers, or the community, people create and feel the impact of business decisions. Solutions to problems need to factor in both their short- and long-term effect on these groups.

There are two different approaches to consulting: Content and Process.

Content consultants are sometimes called expert consultants. They bring ideas, new information and analytical rigor to the client’s problem. They provide answers.

Process consultants help the client solve the problem. They may improve a process, develop people, build a team, or implement a system. They often work with the client longer and do more implementation work than content consultants, and tend to teach the client what they do as they are doing it. Like all teachers since Socrates, they ask questions.

This fundamental difference defined my career. Over time I gravitated from content to process consulting. I saw firms try to blend these approaches, but they do not mix easily. In this book I try to fairly present both sides, but my bias shows.

Ultimately it’s the client’s business. Generally, my view is that most problems that consultants are hired to solve could be solved with internal resources. I believe it is the consultant’s job to help the client change - to innovate or improve and to integrate what is new into theclient’s business - without creating a dependency on consultants.

As a consultant I worked to teach clients what I did and to leave an infrastructure in place to allow the client to solve similar problems themselves the next time. Such a strategy meant that I constantly had to look for new clients, but it also increased client self-sufficiency and made consulting a learning experience. As I said, I find learning fun.

Now as a recent retiree, I want to share what I learned traveling the consulting road. Much has changed since I started my journey. I stayed on this path successfully, sometimes in spite of myself. I believe this roadmap will help you avoid some wrong turns I made. My wish for you is that you enjoy the ride as much as I have.

II. The Road Begins

Mapping a Consulting Career

Two roads diverged . . .

Perhaps you read The Road Not Taken in school. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and I --- I took the one less travelled by and that has made all the difference. My English teacher told me this was about Robert Frost’s choice to become a poet, which he felt, in retrospect, was a good choice for him.

My two roads moment came after nine years as a booking agent for celebrity speakers. I’d kind of stumbled into that career, after not finding work as an actor, but I was good at it. I’d worked at two firms in Boston and was recruited by the lecture bureau attached to New Line Cinema in New York City. I could see how this job might lead to others in entertainment, but I was uncertain about the industry and my wife and I were nervous about moving to New York.

At around this time my brother-in-law Ian got his MBA and went from being an English teacher to a consultant, which seemed like an exciting career. I also knew another booking agent, Jacqueline, who got an MBA and was changing careers, maybe to consulting. In the end, I sold my house, both cars and everything I owned and moved my wife and then two children to London to attend the London Business School. Off I went traveling the consulting road.

That’s it, no industry research, no researching individual firms and where and how they recruited, not even much conversation with Ian or Jacqueline. This was the career for me.

I just wish I’d had a map

So this is a map of sorts. It includes a start on the industry research I wish I had done in the late 1970s, an outlined trajectory of a consulting career and some forks in the road, decisions you will face along the way. There is some expansion on why people are attracted to consulting. I’ll then go into detail on important early career topics like getting hired, being successful and the first methodologies and tools you will use. I’ll go into more depth on the work itself and later career issues. Hopefully you will navigate your career less serendipitously than I did.

CHAPTER 1

Investigating

the Consulting Industry?

What Does That Mean?

Often when people asked what I did for a living, I would answer, I’m a consultant. Then they would ask me, What does that mean? People understand what a doctor does and generally understand what a lawyer or accountant does, but very few understand what a consultant does. Webster isn’t particularly illuminating with its definition of a person who gives advice professionally. Sometimes I would explain that management consulting is part of professional services available to businesses. Accountants help businesses with records and taxes, lawyers help with the law and consultants help solve problems and make changes.

Most people still didn’t get what I did; some launched into consultant jokes. I learned to leave it there, help solve problems and make changes. It’s a big industry.

Industry structure

The global management consulting industry revenue is variously reported as somewhere between $25 billion and $1.3 trillion. Don’t you love the precision of such reporting? Of course, it’s not clear what this revenue number includes. Do you count only firms of a certain size and leave out the millions of independent consultants? By one 2019 estimate, globally there were 700,000 firms of three or more consultants; and for every consultant that worked for a firm there were between five and fifteen that earned at least some of their income from independent consulting. This translates to at least ten million independent consultants.

How do you count the management consulting revenue of accounting firms and law offices? What about advertising agencies? Do training firms count? What part of the revenue of the large software development and systems integration firms are you counting?

Suffice it to say, there are a lot of management consultants and the industry makes a lot of money.

The consulting industry has many of the characteristics of a fragmented market. It has:

Low barriers to entry – Someone once defined a consultant as someone with a black briefcase more than fifty miles from home.

Many competitors – there are literally millions of consulting firms globally ranging in size from Deloitte with more than 280,000 employees to millions of small firms with one to three consultants, including independent practitioners.

No real economies of scale - the predominant delivery mechanism in consulting is consultants’ time, otherwise known as billable hours. You can’t really scale people, there is no multiplier, or as independent consultants frequently moan, You can’t earn money without showing up. The Covid pandemic taught clients and consultants that video conferencing could take the place of some on-site work, but it is still billable hours including all the preparation that goes into a one-hour video call.

Fragmented industries often have significant turnover of firms, lots of startups, many failures, and mergers and acquisitions between smaller and larger players.

The consulting industry also has many of the characteristics of an oligopoly. Much of the revenue, prestige and press are controlled by a few firms. Industry consolidation has meant that the biggest players have gotten bigger, but the top two categories haven’t changed much since 1980. This is how the press and so most clients think of the industry.

The Big Three – McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Bain and Company all got their start as strategy firms but have become more generalist firms. They are the most prestigious firms to hire. The expression No board every fired a CEO for hiring McKinsey could easily be applied to the other two firms. The big three have had a golden gloss since the 1970s and so have an edge at attracting both clients and consulting talent.

The Big Four – Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Ernst & Young (EY), and Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler (KPMG) are the consolidated firms of the Big Eight that were around when I started. These firms all started as accounting and auditing firms that moved into management consulting and systems integration.

The Third Mega-Tier – Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, Capgemini, Cognizant, Kearny, Hitachi Vantara Consulting, IBM Consulting Services, Infosys, Tata Consulting, and others make up this category. Many of these firms focus on information technology and systems integration. I must note, too, that many of these firms are huge, with more employees and greater revenue than firms in the first two tiers, and offer distinct markets and service specialties. Because they aren’t top three or former accounting firms, the press describes them as third tier. I’ve followed that rubric, but do not discount them. They are formidable.

Boutique Firms - Some of these firms are quite prestigious to work for as they are known for a particular methodology or industry expertise. There are too many to name all, but a few examples are L.E.K., Roland Berger,